This invention generally relates to storage area networks, and more particularly to providing access to host attribute information.
As businesses grow, so too do their requirements for the storage of data. Storage area networks (SANs) are a scalable solution to this problem, allowing additional storage devices to be added as the need arises. SANs contain storage devices and servers forming a network configuration. SANs provide a mechanism through which all of a business"" storage devices may be made available to all of the servers in the business"" computer network. The servers in a SAN are coupled to the computer network of the business and act as a pathway between the end user and the stored data. Because stored data does not reside directly on any of the SAN""s servers or the servers of the computer network external from the SAN, server power is utilized for business applications, and network capacity is released to the end user. Since there is no central processing bottleneck and many storage devices may be connected to the SAN, the SAN is scalable.
One of the major challenges for the designers of SANs involves their configuration and management. Due to the ever growing number of components in a scalable SAN, the changing state of those components, and the multitude of physical and logical relationships between components, creating a topology of the SAN which a system manager can use possesses a difficult task. Prior art SANs do not have the ability to automatically create a current topology providing recognizable identifiers for the connected components. As such, system managers are forced to create associations between the world wide name of particular host bus adapters (HBAs) and the servers that are connected to them.
At best, in a SAN in which the components are connected through a fibre channel, the communication protocol of the fibre channel provides a means at the storage array for linking a world wide name (WWN) of a host bus adapter (HBA) to an identifier of the storage array, but the protocol does not provide any information about the server connected to the host bus adapter and therefore does not define a usable topology for the SAN.
A computer program product and method for providing access to host attributes in a storage area network is disclosed. A storage area network is composed of a plurality of hosts coupled to at least one initiator wherein the initiator is in turn coupled to one or more targets. Host attribute information may include the user selected name for the host, the Internet Protocol address for the host, the operating system of the host, the type of each initiator connected to the host, and an identifier of each initiator coupled to the host, such as a worldwide name. An example of a host is a server. An example of an initiator is a host bus adapter and an example of a target is a storage array.
In each host, the host polls for host attribute information. In one embodiment, the step of polling requires accessing all SCSI devices attached to the host and querying the operating system resident on the host. The host then relates the identifier, such as a world wide name of each coupled initiator to the other obtained host attribute information. The host attribute information is sent from each of the plurality of hosts to the one or more targets. Upon receipt of the host attribute information, each target stores the host attribute information in an addressable memory location. After the host attribute information is stored for all hosts, any host may access any of the targets and request the host attribute information resident on the target. In one embodiment the host attribute information on each target is identical. Based upon the host attribute information retrieved from the addressable memory location, the retrieving host creates a topology of the storage area network.
In another embodiment, a user remotely accesses a host which is part of the storage area network. The user may access either the topology created by the host or initiate the retrieval from a database on the target all of the host attribute information in order to create a topology for issuing further commands any of the components of the storage area network. In one embodiment, the host attribute information are retrieved from one of a plurality of storage arrays. In such an embodiment, each storage array is composed of disks grouped into LUNs and the database includes an association of LUN information and host attribute information. The association between the LUN information and the host attribute information is then used in the creation of the topology. The topology may then be displayed to the remotely connected user.